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They’d stopped moving. It’s what had woken her. Ava stayed still and took note of everything around her without opening her eyes. She was still in the cabin of the tractor trailer. Caesar’s head was anchored on her left shoulder, and he was asleep. Normally, that meant safety, but right now? Nothing was safe.
She opened her eyes and lifted her head slowly. Darkness engulfed the cab. She was warm, and the rig was still running, but Jo was nowhere to be seen. Her neck hurt. She tried to loosen muscles made stiff by hours of sleep.
Something about Jo settled Ava’s nerves, and that could be more dangerous than anything else. Complacence in her circumstance could get her killed real quick.
She glanced at the dashboard clock. It was one-thirty in the morning. There was no moon, and any stars in the sky were banked by low-hanging clouds. There were lights outside the cabin attached to poles, about five of them, giving off enough light that Ava could tell they were in a warehouse complex of some type.
Maybe Jo had made her drop? If so, it was time for her and Caesar to disappear. The woman had been godsend but Ava wouldn’t put her in any more danger. Ava may have already signed the woman’s death certificate by picking her truck.
Just one more thing to feel guilt over.
But to feel guilt, you had to survive. And Ava was all about surviving. She had people to kill and she wasn’t going down until she’d scratched them all off her list.
She reached for the door handle, and it was wrenched from her hands.
A really big, really attractive man with a prosthetic blade in the place of one leg stood there smiling up at her. Ava cocked her head, sure she’d never seen him before.
Caesar growled long and low; Ava felt the reverberation in her chest. From behind the man a dog appeared, hackles raised, teeth bared, no doubt growling as Caesar was. A coonhound. Caesar lifted his nose in the air sniffing. The coonhound did the same. Then both eased, tails wagging, in Caesar’s case going so hard he smacked Ava in the face.
The man laughed. “Baby’s not really the menace she comes across as.”
“Caesar is,” Ava replied coldly.
If possible, the curving of the man’s mouth became even more pronounced. “Bravo, Ava Maddigan. Bravo.”
He knew her name. That was just all around bad ju-ju. Caesar sensed Ava’s apprehension and stepped in her lap, ready to spring should he need.
Ava kept her eyes glued to the big man still holding the door to the cab. Jo appeared at his side, motioning her out.
She didn’t know these people. She damn sure didn’t trust them. But she had no choice except to exit the truck.
She held her hand palm down and pushed toward the ground. Caesar jumped down lithely. The big man and Jo stepped back. The dog he’d called Baby did as well. Tension snaked up Ava’s spine, settling in her throat. Thick and cloying, she could taste the anxiety in the air and wondered if it was her own or the people in front of her.
She stepped down carefully, keeping her body loose, prepared for flight.
“You’re safe,” the man said.
“Nowhere is safe,” she murmured.
She pulled the whistle from her pocket, fully prepared to run and have Caesar follow her, but she had no idea where she was or how to get out of the maze of these buildings.
“I’m John Keegan. You can call me Tex.” He shifted and Ava shifted as well, keeping him in her line of sight but moving away from the cab so she had space to jet if need be. Caesar backed up to stand beside Ava. She reached for his head and laid a hand on it. It conveyed that Ava was okay and aware.
Ava didn’t reply to his introduction. He already knew her name.
“I hope you don’t mind that Jo brought you here,” Keegan said.
“I don’t know where here is,” she responded, hoping she was talking loud enough.
He cocked his head and threw an indecipherable look at Jo. “Are you deaf?”
He was figuring her out too quickly.
She lifted the whistle up to her mouth, blew it once, and then she pivoted to flee.
She got nowhere, hitting a brick wall in the shape of a man. Larger than Keegan. A solid frame covered in lithe muscles, but it was his smell, citrus and sandalwood, that had everything in her seizing up in fear.
She brought her knee up and he blocked her, his hands around her upper arms holding her completely still. She hissed in a breath. Ava had forgotten the wound on her arm from earlier. But she’d not give him the satisfaction of knowing he’d hurt her. She’d never let him feel that again. Instead, she glared up at him, meeting his navy-blue gaze, watching as his eyes narrowed.
